


point of origin

by sapphire_child



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: then_theres_us, Creepy, Gen, Ghost Stories, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-22
Updated: 2010-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-28 20:58:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12615352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire_child/pseuds/sapphire_child
Summary: All ghost stories have their origins in some small form of truth.





	point of origin

The rain was falling thick, night she came – the disappearing girl.

They say she appeared out of a flash of lightning. A fearsome beautiful thing she was, just standing in the middle of the train tracks in the rain. Some folks said she must’ve been an angel – an avenging angel. She didn’t hurt nobody though, just walked on down those train tracks in the rain and cold and wind. Walked all night she did, never stopping.

They say some folks tried to talk her off the tracks, asked her if she needed help. Directions. But she wouldn’t say nothin’ and she wouldn’t stop for nothin’. Just kept on walking till the dawn mail train came through to meet her.

Now by that time, police’d been called down. Said there was some crazy lady walking down the tracks, gonna get herself hit by the mail train or summat. So down we came, sirens going and all. I was brand new, barely earned my badge so I was told ‘keep that light on her’ and that’s what I did.

So the sun’s not come up and I’m holding the damned torch up to her. Gold hair she had, even though she was all over soaked. Light made it bright as anything, like a halo. And damned if she didn’t look like an angel, just like everyone’d said.

Captain came up to try and talk her off the tracks but nothing doing. Then a few others tried. Me, I just walked with the torch. Captain’s about to come back up to talk to her again and I figure, why not ask her something?

“You lost sweetheart?” I says. And she keeps walkin’ like she can’t even hear me so I try again, bit louder case she’s hard of hearing over the rain. “Hey,” I says. “Where you from? Can we help get you home?”

And then she stops walking. Just stops dead still. So everyone else stops too. And she looks round at me and she don’t say nothing – she just shake her head. And I’ll be damned if she weren’t the saddest looking creature I ever seen.

Course, I dunno what to say next then. “You gonna come off them tracks?” I ask, hopeful like. But she shakes her head no again and she just keeps right on walking down them tracks.

Captain kept tryin’ to talk to her then. Kept tryin’ to talk her off the tracks. Hell, we all tried. We walked, me and her, ten miles in the dark before the damned mail train came. Captain started a panic up, wanted to go in and drag her off only she started running then and we couldn’t keep up. I never seen nobody run that fast before. ‘Specially not head first into a damned train.

Train blew its whistle, I remember hearin’ it and I tried keeping the torch steady on her. Everyone was yellin’ and carrying on. Train lights got bigger and brighter and she was just running _too fast_...

Then the train went past, lights blindin’. By the time it’d gone over we weren’t expecting much left of her.

We weren’t expecting to find nothin’.

Yeah you heard right – nothin’! No blood, no body, no nothin’. So’s only way I can figure it, I reckon I musta saw me a ghost that night. Don’t believe me if you want – Captain sure never did. But I swear she musta been out there on them tracks lookin’ for something or someone in that rain only she never found ‘em.

I been back there few times though y’know and I ain’t never seen her again? Not once. Folks don’t talk about it so much – so long ago now they’re forgettin’ see? But I remember her and I’ll remember her till the day I die. All that gold hair and the look she had about her – all that sadness.

I ain’t ever gonna forget that disappearing girl.

~*~

  
_The Doctor sat back contemplatively, his fingers steepling beneath his chin. Amy looked sad, was curling into Rory’s side almost unconsciously seeking comfort from him. He stroked her hair in a slightly absent but nonetheless soothing fashion. Their host pulled back another swig of his beer and stared into the grille of the grim, archaic little heater in the corner._

_The young Officer from the story had turned into an old man but outside the rain still came down – collapsing to the ground like a hundred million teardrops. And all of them shed for the same lonely, lost girl who had never come back to visit him again._

_“I wonder if she really was a ghost,” Amy wondered the next morning when the rain had passed and they were headed back to the TARDIS. Her voice was unaccountably quiet as she continued. “If she found what she was looking for...”_  
  
Rory fidgeted. He didn’t have the answer and false platitudes would only make Amy angry and upset. The Doctor however, had heard far too many stories of blonde women appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing just as suddenly in great flashes of light. 

_There can only be so many coincidences in a life, but if there was ever going to be one that would come back again and again then he’s glad that it’s her._

_Pausing in unlocking the doors to the TARDIS, he looks up into the sky where the cloud cover is breaking into something hopeful and blue. He is thoughtful for a moment. The story in question is out of his hands now._

_That doesn’t mean that he can’t still hope and pray for a happy ending to it._

_He takes in a breath and then lets it out in a soft sigh._

_“I certainly hope she did.”_


End file.
